Putin hosts a summit in a bid to show the West it can't keep Russia off the global stage
NPRPutin hosts a summit in a bid to show the West it can't keep Russia off the global stage toggle caption Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP In the coming days, Russian President Vladimir Putin will be shaking hands with multiple world leaders, including China's Xi Jinping, India's Narendra Modi, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iran's Masoud Pezeshkian. "While Putin will want the China-Russia relationship to appear as good as ever, Xi may also want to signal to Western states and others that Beijing officially remains 'neutral' in Russia's war in Ukraine and is not a formal ally of Moscow," said Eva Seiwert, a foreign policy and security expert with the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. Sponsor Message India and Brazil also don't want to be "pulled into China's gravitational orbit," said Theresa Fallon of the Center for Russia, Europe, Asia Studies. Membership in BRICS would help Erdogan "strengthen his own hand" at a time when ties with the West are at a low, said Gonul Tol, director of the U.S.-based Middle East Institute's Turkey program.